Re: Choosing graphics backend for documentation

[Daniel J Sebald]

On 07/27/2015 11:36 AM, Mike Miller wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 17:14:16 +0100, Michael Godfrey wrote:
> > The way I wrote the preliminary version of this, it fell back to
> > gnuplot (if available), but I am not sure that this is really a
> > good idea. Having copies of the Manual built with problems
> > may not be helpful.
>
> Agreed. Are you mostly referring to bug #42838 (black plot area with gnuplot 5)?

I think using -epsc should fix most problems.

gnuplot added a "mono" option to its terminal settings, but developers 
have claimed not being sure exactly what that is supposed to mean 
anymore.  I think Octave folks might think of that as being grayscale, 
whereas for gnuplot I'm not sure, could be "single tone".  (Hence, any 
non-white color gets mapped to black.)  I've suggested to gnuplot 
developers that terminals have mono/grayscale/color options, but it may 
be that gnuplot developers have concentrated more on color behavior 
lately and view mono as something not very common anymore.

Also, there may have been an Octave change to make -deps mean grayscale 
for compatibility reasons.

And then there is the change whereby Octave first generates EPS output 
then uses some external conversion utility to create all other formats.

All of these changes seemed to happen at the same time making the 
gnuplot behavior appear dodgy.

Would a gnuplot "grayscale" setting (as opposed to "mono") help? 
Another approach is to always use color gnuplot options, but have Octave 
gnuplot "driver" use psuedo-grayscale by making all three color channels 
the same.

Dan